Night Zero- Second Day

by Rob Horner

  It took a few hours to make it across town to the small office building which housed the ten-man programming company he worked for, one of about a dozen small businesses housed within. His firm didn’t need the receiving bay in the back, but everyone had a code for it. With the bus off the street and the radio plugged into city power, he was ready to rock.

  All he needed was a place to go.

  It turned out that others needed him to stay right where he was, a valuable source of on-site information and a switchboard, of sorts, for people seeking to connect.

  * * * * *

  “Joe’s the man,” Ed said.

  “Eye o’ da storm,” Granny Lee added.

  Jennifer smiled and said, “He’s a HAM operator in Atlanta.”

  “When shit start going sideways,” Ed started, then glanced down at Granny Lee, “um…sorry Granny Lee—”

  “Like I care what you say,” she huffed.

  “Anyway, he found us. Well, he found Stanley. He’s our CB guy.”

  “Stanley mans the horn; Ed calls the shots,” Luna said.

  “Unless Jenn changes the target,” Granny Lee muttered.

  “Hush, now,” Jennifer said, laying a hand on the old woman’s shoulder.

  Watching the exchange, and how the old woman tilted her head to look up at the younger, Robbie understood the dynamic. There wasn’t much of a resemblance, but he was certain Granny Lee was Jennifer’s actual grandmother and Ed’s by way of marriage.

  “So,” Robbie said, “if this Joe confirms the people in the school are still alive?”

  “Then we can try your and Jeff’s plan,” Ed finished.

  “Not bad,” Jeff said. “Do we have any scouts nearby who can find us a suitable third target?”

  Jenn moved away from Granny Lee’s rocker. “I’ll go get Stanley working on it. Back in a bit.”

  Chapter 31

  After twenty minutes, showered, shaved, and dressed in sweat clothes, Greg Lowman sat down to a breakfast more to his expectations. Runny eggs made in a batch big enough to feed a platoon, bacon crispy enough to crack a denture, and cold toast somewhere on the line between just cooked enough to earn the name and stale from sitting on the counter too long. The coffee was a pleasant surprise—freshly brewed, strong, and with a hint of earthiness like some of the darker roasts from Starbucks. The mess hall, or galley, or cafeteria, whatever they called it, looked like something from a hospital. Round tables with six chairs each spaced out across a wide area. One wall was devoted to trash cans and a tray return, while the other featured vending machines for everything from sodas to snack, though none of them required money to operate.

  Everything from the hallways to the plastic chairs in the cafeteria spoke to governmental excess. The floors were tiled in gray and had a bouncy give to them, much different than the plain poured concrete of most military facilities. The halls were well lit and freshly painted, the paintings dusted along their frames. The White House must employ an entire cleaning crew devoted solely to keeping this place immaculate on the off chance the president would need it. There were Marines and Secret Service everywhere, some eating or talking quietly in small groups, some standing at attention outside a door, rifles held ready. The only room he remembered being labeled was the War Room, where he’d been escorted the day before. He didn’t think he could find it again without a guide.

  Turned out, he didn’t need to worry about it.

  Davis Miller found him as he was finishing his breakfast.

  For all that the media hated the current president, accusing him of everything from conspiring with the Russians to paying porn stars to seduce political rivals, they hated Davis Miller even more. The talking heads on every alphabet channel proclaimed Miller the power behind the throne, the brains to the president’s bravado, brawn, and bully pulpit. During the teleconference yesterday, it was Miller’s voice which brought calm to the proceedings. He spoke softly in an unaccented manner, enunciating each syllable, yet with a liberal inclusion of metaphor. Greg hadn’t been able to think of much else all night, his mind serving up an image from what the man said during the teleconference.

  You can’t put the yolk back in a broken egg, no matter whose fault it is that the egg got broken. Well, this egg is truly fucking shattered…

  He was of average height, well dressed in a three-piece suit none the worse for having either been slept in or packed in a garment bag…unless the man simply hadn’t slept yet.

  “I’m glad I found you here, Dr. Lowman.”

  “Am I needed in the War Room?” Greg asked, hastily putting down his fork.

  “Maybe later. For now, I wanted to run a few things by you, let you know what’s coming and see what you think of the plans.”

  “The president—”

  “Is the one who proposed the plan, and everyone else agreed.” He met Greg’s eyes and held them. There was intelligence there, craftiness. Suddenly Greg found himself believing the claims, that this man might hold a lot more power than Joe Public believed. “None of them are infectious disease doctors, though. A fact I reminded them of while they were hashing things out.”

  “Okay,” Lowman answered, trying to look nonchalant, relaxing back in his chair. He wished it didn’t feel like turning his back on a rabid wolverine, trusting in a leash of yarn to keep the creature from attacking. He forced himself to meet the advisor’s gaze. “What’s the plan?”

  “First, I want to know something. What does it take to make a vaccine?”

  Greg’s eyes narrowed. “Is this a joke?”

  For the briefest moment, Davis seemed taken aback by Lowman’s reaction. Then his face softened, his mouth opening in a smile. “Oh my God, I didn’t even think about how you might take that.” He laughed, a genuine sound which changed Lowman’s perception of him. The intelligence was still there, the mind which might be running the country, but he became more human and less a cold, calculating symbol of power. “No, I’m sorry. I meant that seriously. Assuming the spread of this…thing…is viral, what would it take to make a vaccine?”

  Lowman picked up his coffee mug and took a sip, giving himself time to think. There was more to the question than a simple request for information, he was sure of it. Davis might be a normal guy, as evidenced by his genuine laugh, but he was still a normal guy with an inordinate amount of sway. Saying the wrong thing here could have dire consequences.

  “In order to think about a vaccine,” Greg began, “we first have to assume—and it’s a big assumption—that the prion involved is inert unless the virus can replicate.”

  “Why is that important?”

  “Because if the prion is the infectious particle, there’s nothing we can do to stop it,” Greg answered flatly.

  “Okay,” Davis said, “would the research notes have that information?”

  “It should, but all the work was done in Atlanta at the destroyed lab.”

  Now Davis smiled. “Done on CDC computers, of course, which are owned by the government.”

  “Still destroyed.”

  “But not lost.”

  Hope fluttered in Lowman’s chest. “What do you mean?”

  “There’s an adage that nothing on the Internet is ever truly deleted, right? Well, the same goes double for anything done on a government computer. It’s all backed up and kept off-site. We can access anything from the Communications Room down here.”

  Greg struggled to keep his voice neutral. “Will we be able to? Won’t there be passwords, encryption?”

  If anything, the advisor’s smile widened. “I would hope so, but it’ll open to a governmental Master account.”

  Lowman let out a whistle. “Is that true for everything?”

  Davis winked. “Why do you think we weren’t worried about Hillary last election?”

  At this, Greg issued a laugh, then forced himself to calm down. “Okay, so we may have their data.”

  “Not ‘may.’”

  “All right. So, we have it. We still don’t know if—”


  “Humor me, doctor. Presume there’s something we can do about it and indulge in the intellectual exercise.”

  “All right,” Greg repeated. “We assume the prions are inactive. That’s how the experiment was conceptualized, anyway. The prion was only supposed to be a shell to allow a fragile, inactive virion to survive airborne dispersal.”

  Davis remained silent as Greg focused on the problem.

  “So, if the prion is negated, we have a bacterial agent which causes immediate sickness but without widespread contagion, and an attached virus which is contagious, but so far only seems to be spreading an aspect of the prion.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The prion is what attacks the brain, Mr. Miller. It causes some kind of change, probably to the frontal lobe, which alters personality and causes aggression. The aggression leads to physical violence, which in turn spreads the contagion.”

  “So, the sickness is actively seeking to spread itself?”

  “I wouldn’t necessarily jump to such a conclusion,” Greg replied. “That sort of projection borders on anthropomorphism, granting near human design and planning capabilities to something which doesn’t even meet the criteria of a single-celled living organism.”

  “A coincidence, then?”

  “Yes,” Lowman answered, “rather like considering the winter as Flu Season. Influenza never dies, and neither are there more copies of it when it gets cold. It just survives longer in cold temperatures and we cluster together for warmth when it’s cold, so the virus spreads more easily and rapidly.”

  “All right.”

  “Anyway, considering the inclination toward violence, I think having an idea of what changes, if any, are occurring in an infected person would be of great benefit. It would also be necessary to find antibodies to the virus, something which could possibly be replicated to promote immunity in a compromised person.”

  “Hmph,” Davis mumbled. He steepled his fingers in front of his face and appeared to be considering something.

  Greg, lost in thought, continued to work the problem in his mind.

  It really would depend on what happened to someone exposed to the virus. Not just someone immune, but also someone who…changed. If blood type was a predictor of immunity, it might not be possible to create a vaccine for everyone. But an anti-virus, something to fight off the infection after it set in…that was worth pursuing as well.

  What about people walking around who shouldn’t be able to? How do you explain those, huh?

  “This doesn’t leave the table, then,” Davis said, his voice dropping to a furtive whisper even though they were the only two in the cafeteria. “We received word from a National Guard outpost that they have a man in custody who not only was bitten and survived, but who also has a CD with a recording of a cat scan image from an infected person.”

  Greg sat up. “Can we get it here?”

  Davis held up his hand. “We’re working on it. But there’s more. One of our own, an Army general stationed in the Pentagon, says his daughter is coming into Richmond with another guy who was bitten and didn’t change. They’re apparently driving up from South Carolina.”

  Greg remembered the carnage and chaos in the streets of DC. He hadn’t been able to manage a few miles; how the hell was anyone going to get to the White House from outside the city?

  “We’re arranging to pick them up in Richmond,” Davis said when he asked. Then, “What do you think, Dr. Lowman?”

  What did he think?

  Having a supply of antibodies as well as access to immune-competent blood—his own would suffice if no one wanted to volunteer—and the ability to see inside the mind of someone changed by the disease…well, these were merely the ingredients. Making a vaccine or anti-virus was far from a foregone success and would take much longer in real life than in the movies. Possibly years.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Davis said. Greg was surprised the adviser hadn’t left. “Getting everything here doesn’t get you a lab where you could work on this.”

  “It’s more than that,” Greg replied. “I’m a doctor, but I’m not a lab guy. More than the tools, I need people to operate them, men and women who know what to do and how to do it.”

  “Already on the ‘to do’ list,” Davis answered. He rose, preparing to leave. “Just sit tight, Dr. Answer the president’s questions when he asks, and leave the rest to us. We’re building the biological package and moving everyone to the CDC in Atlanta.”

  “The biological package? I don’t—”

  “I mean the people—you, the exposed, the immune, everyone. Let’s get them all to the CDC. They’re already locked in and shut up tight. Standard procedure to safeguard our best hope at survival in case of a biological attack. They’ve got supplies to last. They only need the raw materials. And you, Dr. Lowman.”

  “Shit. It hardly sounds like you need me.”

  “All of us? We’re political hacks. You’re the Chief Medical Officer, the guy whose picture is on the wall right above their department heads. They’ll listen to you. And what’s more, they’ll work harder if you’re there with them.”

  Not for the first time, Greg was thankful that he didn’t have any immediate family. No wife to worry about. No kids to fret over. His parents long buried. It was just him and a job that needed to be done. He wasn’t entirely certain he was the right man for the job, but he’d heard it said that it was better to doubt and work to overcome than to be overconfident and fail.

  “I’ll be ready,” he said.

  “Good. See that you are. They’ve apparently got a couple of these victims on ice as well. One of them almost seems human. Maybe that’ll give you more to work with.”

  Lowman nodded.

  * * * * *

  PFC Dallas returned with a plate of cold scrambled eggs, a handful of bacon strips greasy enough to lubricate the bowels for a week, and a cup of coffee so hot and strong that Jesse tasted none of it. By then, he’d gone through the entire story, from the passenger jet landing in his flyspeck airport to his emergency landing outside Oklahoma City and then to the flight which led him to Tennessee.

  Now, as he sucked air to cool his burning mouth, Sergeant Harding took up the narrative.

  “We know there was an explosion in Atlanta, but we don’t know whose shit exploded or what flavor of crap got spewed into the air. All we know is it happened around the airport, and just about everyone exposed to it has gotten sick and died. Not just air travel people, either. There were more car accidents in and around the greater Atlanta area than can be counted, most caused by people losing control of their bowels before losing control of their vehicles. Airplanes which took off in the minutes immediately following the explosion were our greatest concern. There’s a lot of ground a plane can cover in an hour, which seems to be the typical gestational period for…whatever it was.”

  “What do you mean, ‘were?’” Jesse asked.

  “Son, you’ve heard the expression, ‘yesterday’s problems are today’s fond memories.’”

  It wasn’t a question, and the sergeant continued before an answer could be offered. “The airport incident was three days ago. Two days ago, we set up shop here, responding to a combination of orders from the governor to secure the areas surrounding where certain planes landed and a distress call from an air traffic controller.”

  Steve. His name was Steve.

  “Well, we’ve secured our area, but the shit had already spread into the surrounding cities and suburbs before we got here. Yesterday, we spent a large part of the day moving our camp close in on the runway and setting up fortifications. We’re surrounded by the enemy, but thankfully, they don’t seem to know we’re here.”

  “Do you know what’s making the people go crazy?” Jesse asked around a mouthful of eggs.

  The sergeant shook his head. “Above my paygrade, I think. From the orders we’re being given, it seems likely someone knows, but they aren’t telling us. Anyway, what we’ve seen so far jives wit
h how you described it. People get sick, some go crazy and attack others. Then the damnedest thing happens, and the ones they attacked go crazy, too. The one predictive factor we’ve identified so far is a strange inflammation radiating out from the points of injury.”

  “Like a phlebitis or lymphangitis,” Dallas interjected.

  “Trust a medical person to muddle common sense with big words,” Harding replied. “But yeah, like those.”

  Jesse remembered the strange red and blue lines running up the arms and over the chests of the men and women in the airport. Ragan’s had looked more black, but that could’ve been a trick of the light inside the plane’s cabin.

  “Most of the pulsing lines seem to be black, or maybe they turn that color so fast that anything else is rare,” the sergeant continued. “So far, everyone we’ve found with the lines turns crazy. And the crazy spreads. But there’s something else that happens first.”

  Jesse thought about it for a moment, then said, “They die.”

  “Bingo! They die. Heart stops beating and lungs stop breathing. It only lasts for a few seconds—”

  “About the same length of time as it takes for the heart to reboot after a dose of Adenosine,” Dallas said.

  The sergeant stopped speaking. Jesse noticed a vein in the man’s forehead pulsing. It wasn’t black, but it certainly indicated an imminent explosion.

  “Out, Mr. Dallas!” Harding shouted. And if you ever interrupt me again, you’ll run laps until your feet dig us a fire ring.”

  Jesse sat quietly through the dressing down, his fork hovering above the plate. Long years in the Army taught you to remain quiet when someone else was being yelled at.

  I wouldn’t have tolerated someone continuously speaking out of turn either. Especially if the only thing they offered was a chance to show their education.

  Like flipping a switch, the sergeant went back to his formerly congenial speaking tone once the PFC left the tent.

  “Sorry about that. You know how it is.”

  Jesse nodded to show he understood.